Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 by Various

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[Footnote D: _Histoire de la Literature Francaise_. Par D. Nisard, de
l'Academie Francaise, Inspecteur-General de l'Enseignement Superieur.
Tome Quatrieme, Paris: Firmin Didot Freres, Fils, et Cie. 8vo. pp. 584.]

The work of M. Gerusez, "History of French Literature from its Origin to
the Devolution,"[E] although it had the honor of being considered worthy
of the _prix Gobert_ by the French Academy, is far from satisfying the
requirements of general literary history. It may rather be considered
a systematic series of essays, beginning with the "Chansons de Geste,"
analyzing several poems of the cycle of Charlemagne, and followed by
successive independent chapters on the Middle Ages, the revival of
letters, and modern times down to the Revolution. It will be remembered
that in 1859 M. Gerusez published a "History of Literature during the
French Revolution, 1789-1800." This also obtained a prize from the
Academy,--much more deservedly, we think, than the last production, when
we consider the interest he cast over the literary efforts of a period
much more marked by action than by artistic productiveness of any kind.
The German writer Schmidt-Weiszenfels in the same year issued a work
with the pretentious title, "History of the Revolution-Literature of
France."[F] This is little more than a declamatory production, wanting
in what is most characteristic of the German mind, original research.
The "Literary History of the National Convention," [G] by E. Maron, is
devoted more to politics than to letters.

[Footnote E: Histoire de la Litterature Francaise, depuis ses Origines
jusqu'a la Revolution. Par Eugene Gerusez. Paris: Didier et Cie. 2 vols.
8vo. pp. 488, 507.]

[Footnote F: _Geschichte der Franzoesischen Revolutions-Literatur_,
1789-1795. Von Schmidt-Weiszenfels. Prague: Kober und Markgraf. 8vo. pp.
395.]

[Footnote G: _Histoire Litteraire de la Convention Nationale_. Par
Eugene Maron. Paris: Poulet-Malassis et De Boise. 12mo. pp. 359.]

To return to the volumes of M. Gerusez. It is rather a sign of poverty
in general literary history, that detached sketches, with little
connection beyond their chronological order, should have been deemed
worthy of the prize and the praises awarded to them. However, though
lacking in comprehensive views such as we have a right to expect from an
author who attempts to portray the rise, growth, and full expansion of
a literature, the work of M. Gerusez may be perused with pleasure and
profit by the student. It is clear and satisfactory in the details.
Thus, the pages devoted to the writers of the "Encyclopedie," though
few, may vie with any that have been written to set in their true light
men whose influence was so great on the generation that succeeded them.
If impartiality consisted in always steering in the _juste-milieu_, M.
Gerusez would be the most impartial of historians. As it is, we have to
thank him for a good book, regretting only that he has gone no farther.

Far otherwise is it with M. Saint-Marc Girardin. The eloquent Sorbonne
professor has seen his fame increase with every new volume of his
"Course of Dramatic Literature." We have now the fourth volume.[H] "A
Course of Dramatic Literature";--it is more. It is the history of the
expression of Passion among the ancients and the moderns, by no means
confined to the drama. The present volume, as well as the third,
published several years ago, is devoted to the analysis of Love as
expressed in different ages and by different nations, under the two
divisions of _L'Amour Ingenu_ and _L'Amour Conjugal_.

[Footnote H: _Cours de Litterature Dramatique._ Par Saint-Marc Girardin,
de l'Academie Francaise, Professeur a la Faculte des Lettres de Paris,
Membre du Conseil Imperial de l'Instruction Publique. Tome IV. Paris:
Charpentier.]

The first he had studied in the authors of antiquity in his third
volume, beginning in this with the episode of Cupid and Psyche in
Apuleius; then following up, through the moderns, the expression
of Ingenuous Love in Corneille, La Fontaine, Sedaine, Bernardin de
Saint-Pierre, Milton, Gessner, Voss, Andre Chenier, and Chateaubriand.
For the last he finds more blame than praise. Indeed, this
effect-seeking writer, with all his genius, seemed less fitted than any
one to express the natural and spontaneous. His Atala, who charms us so
at the first reading, deals in studied emotions. As to Rene, his is the
vain sentimentality parading its own impotency for higher feelings,
a virtual boasting of want of soul,--the sickly dissatisfaction of
Werther, without his passion for an excuse. M. Saint-Marc Girardin then
follows up his subject through later authors, even in Madame George
Sand and in Madame Emile de Girardin. He is particularly severe upon
Lamartine, that poet "who for more than thirty years seemed best to
express love as our century understands it," but who in Raphael
and Graziella destroyed, by disclosing too much, the power of his
"Meditations Poetiques."

On Conjugal Love the classic models are first consulted,--Oenone,
Evadne, Medea,--these characters being followed through the delineation
of modern dramatists. We know of no more exquisite criticism than
the pages devoted to Griseldis. Analyzing the accounts of Boccaccio,
Chaucer, and Perault, our author concludes with the play of "Munck
Bellinghausen." The last chapters, on "Love and Duty," are among the
most eloquently written in the volume. For style, M. Saint-Marc Girardin
is second to no living author of France.

In this course we find an evident predilection for the models of
antiquity. When a comparison is instituted between the ancients and the
moderns, we feel pretty certain of the result before the writer has
proceeded very far. Not that we ever find a systematic idolizing of all
that is classic merely. Far from it. Modern writers are not neglected.
In this particular a genuine service is done to critical literature. It
often seems as if literary lecturers and historians were attacked by an
aesthetic presbyopy. For them the present age never produces anything
worth even a passing remark. The masterpieces they notice must be old
and time-honored. Not so in the present studies on the passions. Ponsard
finds his place side by side with older names. After an appreciative
notice of the Lucretia of Livy, we find a comment on the Lucretia which
may have been played the week before at the Theatre Francais. Nor is
it a slight service done to contemporary letters, when a master-critic
turns his thoughts to works which, if they do not hold the first rank,
yet, by the talent of their authors and the nature of their subjects,
have attracted all eyes for a time. Such are the writings of Madame
George Sand. Of these, "Andre," "La Mare au Diable," and "La Petite
Fadette" are reviewed with praise in the work under consideration, while
the force of criticism is expended on "Indiana," "Lelia," and "Jacques."

* * * * *

Whatever claims the academician Victor de Laprade may have to poetic
talent, he certainly sinks below mediocrity when he attempts to
discuss the principles of the art he practises. Since it has been his
good-fortune to be numbered among the illustrious Forty he has several
times attempted literary criticism, but never so extensively as in
his last work, "Questions d'Art et de Morale."[I] This is a series of
discursive essays, a few upon art in general, the greater part, however,
restricted to letters; the whole written in a poetic prose not without a
certain charm, but wearisome for continuous reading.

[Footnote I: _Questions d'Art et de Morale._ Par Victor de Laprade, de
l'Academie Francaise. Paris: Didier et Cie. 8vo.]

The object of M. de Laprade is to defend what he calls "Spiritualism in
Art." He wages an unrelenting war against the modern school of Realism.
It is not the representation of visible Nature that the artist must
seek; his aim must be "the representation of the invisible." He grows
eloquent when he develops his favorite theories, and always succeeds in
interesting when he applies them successively to all the arts. As to the
author's political opinions, he takes no pains to conceal them. His work
is an outcry against equality and universal suffrage. He traces the
apathy of poetic creativeness in France to the sovereignty usurped
everywhere "by the inferior elements of intelligence in the State." He
seems to think, that, as humanity grows older, art falls from its divine
ideal. Of contemporary architecture, he says that it can produce nothing
original save railroad depots and crystal palaces. "A glass architecture
is the only one that fully belongs to our age." Music, the "vaguest and
most sensuous of all the arts," he regards as the art of the present.
The religious worship of the future appears to him "a symphony with a
thousand instruments executed under a dome of glass."

As to the purely literary essays of M. de Laprade, they may be read both
with more pleasure and more profit than those in which he attempts to
discuss the principles of aesthetics. "French Tradition in Literature,"
and "Poetry, and Industrialism," are full of suggestive thoughts, and,
coming in the latter half of the volume, make us forget the pretentious
nature of the first.

* * * * *

M. Gustave Merlet is a more modest opponent of some of the tendencies
of the age. He presents his first book to the public under the title,
"Realisme et Fantaisie,"[J] earnestly and loyally attacking the two
extremes of literature.

[Footnote J: _Le Realisme et la Fantaisie dans la Litterature_. Par
Gustave Merlet. Paris: Didier et Cie. 12mo. pp. 431.]

Two styles of writing, diametrically opposed in every particular, have
of late years flourished in the lighter productions of France. Some
there are who would seek to incarnate in letters Nature as it is,
without adornings, without ideal additions. The cry of the upholders
of this doctrine is: Truth in art, war against the freaks of the
imagination that colors all in unreal tints. The writers who have
adopted such sentiments have been termed "Realists," much to their
dissatisfaction. Balzac was the greatest of them. Champfleury may be
called the most strenuous supporter of the system. There is a certain
force, a false air of truth, in this daguerreotype process of writing,
that seduces at first sight. When a man of some genius, as Gustave
Flaubert in "Madame Bovary," undertakes to paint Nature, he sets details
otherwise revolting in such relief that the very novelty and boldness of
the attempt put us off our guard, and we are in danger of admitting as
beauties what, after all, are only audacities.

The other extreme into which the literature of the day in France has
fallen is an excess of fancy. A writer like Arsene Houssaye will write
his "King Voltaire" or his "Madame de Pompadour," or Capefigue his
"Madame de la Valliere," in which the judgment seems to have been
set aside, and historical facts accumulated in some opium-dream are
strangely woven into a narrative representing reality, with about as
much truth as Oriental arabesques, or the adornings of richly wrought
tapestry. This extreme is even more dangerous than the former, for it
makes of letters a mere plaything, and recommends itself to many by its
very faults. Paradox and overdrawn scenes usurp the place of the real.
The world presented by the exclusive worshippers of fancy is
little better than that "Pompadour" style of painting in which the
carnation-tipped checks of shepherds and shepherdesses take the place of
a too healthy Rubens-like portraiture. There are dainty, well-trimmed
lambs, with pretty blue favors tied about their necks, just like
_dragees_ and _bonbons_. As we wander among those opera-swains in silk
hose and those shepherdesses in satin bodices, their perfumes tire
and nauseate, till we fairly wish for a good breeze wafted from some
farm-yard, reconciled in a measure to the extravagances of the so-called
"school of Nature."

M. Merlet's subject, it may be seen, is of interest merely to the
student of the latest French literature. A more comprehensive study
would not have been out of place in his volume. To those who may be
interested in writers like Murger, Feydeau, Houssaye, and Brifaut, the
book is full of interesting matter. To the general reader it may be of
value as characterizing with fidelity some of the tendencies of French
thought.

* * * * *

We must not omit mentioning a work published in Germany on the
"Literature of the Second Empire since the _Coup d'Etat_ of the Second
of December, 1852."[K] The nature of this sketch could almost be
predicated with certainty from the state of feeling towards France in
the capital in which it was issued, and the encomiums it received from
the Prussian political press. The author, William Reymond, who has
proved himself no mean critic in some of his former essays upon the
modern productions of France, addresses himself almost exclusively to a
German public. His work, as he himself seemed to fear, is not calculated
for the taste of Paris, even if it were considered unobjectionable there
on the score of the political strictures that are introduced, whether in
the discussion of the last play or in the analysis of the last volume of
poems.

[Footnote K: _Etudes sur la Litterature du Second Empire Francais,
depuis le Coup d'Etat du deux Decembre._ Par William Reymond. Berlin: A.
Charisius. 12mo. pp. 227.]

The truth is, M. Reymond, with much apparent praise, very nearly comes
to the conclusion that the second Empire has no literature, and very
little philosophy is granted to it in the chapter, "What remains of
Philosophy in France." The Novel and the Theatre fare little better at
his hands. He has literally made a police investigation of what is most
objectionable in French letters, citing now and then some great name,
but dwelling with complacency on what is deserving of censure. The
influence of France, and of Paris in particular, on the tastes of the
Continent, irritates him. He seeks to impress upon his readers the
venality of letters and the general debasement of character and of
talent that are prevalent in that capital. Such is the spirit of these
"Etudes." The author has, unfortunately, not to seek far for a practical
corroboration of his theory, though it is but justice to say that the
verses he quotes as characteristic are far from being so. It is to be
feared that M. Reymond has rather sought out the blemishes. He has found
many, we admit. His readers will thank him for his clever exposition of
them, satisfied in many cases to accept the results he presents, without
feeling inclined to make such a personal investigation into the lower
regions of letters.

* * * * *

"The Political and Literary History of the Press in France,"[L] by
Eugene Hatin, is now concluded. As early as 1846, this author published
a small work, "Histoire du Journal en France." Since that time he has
devoted himself exclusively to the study of French journalism. Though
liberal in his views, he is not in favor of unlimited liberty of the
press. He believes it to be the interest of society that a curb should
be put on its excesses. "What we must hope for is a liberty that may
have full power for good, but not for evil."

[Footnote L: _Histoire Politique et Litteraire de la Presse en France._
Avec une Introduction Historique sur les Origines du Journal et la
Bibliographie Generale des Journaux, depuis leur Origine. Par Eugene
Hatin. Paris: Poulet-Malassis et De Boise. 8 vols. 12mo.]

The two volumes published in 1861 contain the history of journalism
during the latter part of the French Revolution, under the first Empire,
the Restoration, and the Government of July. The work may be said to
conclude with 1848, as less than twenty pages are devoted to the twelve
years following. In this, however, the writer has done all he could be
expected to do. This is no time for the candid historian to utter his
thoughts of the present _regime_ in France. Since the fatal decree of
the 17th of February, 1852, the press has had only so much of life as
the present sovereign has thought fit to grant it. Then it was that a
representative of the people uttered the words,--"We must overthrow the
press, as we have overthrown the barricades." Such were the sentiments
of the National Assembly,--not understanding, that, when it struck at
such an ally, it destroyed itself. And, indeed, it was but a short time
before the tribune shared the fate of journalism. Better things had been
hoped on the accession of the present Minister of the Interior, but as
yet they have not been realized.

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